Kieron

Welcome, and I am also sorry that the loss is so fresh and is now hitting you hard. It tends to do that. One moment you think you're okay enough to just keep going and then blammo, you're right in the thick of it, unable to see through the water in your eyes or breathe through the gasping sobs. I used to say "I can't believe he is gone" probably hundreds of times by now, and still do it, now and again. I'm back to wondering what I'm going to do with our place, especially now that it's dark earlier and we just had a big snowstorm, and there's no one else here but the cat for company. As Ana says, this is a compassionate site and indeed we "get it," here.

Welcome, Cinda. That ache in your bones is very real. While everyone experiences the loss of a spouse in their own way, it's pretty certain your body will let you know the depths of your grief through aches, pains, heaviness, fatigue, etc. I used to have the worst pain in my shoulders, forearms and hands, so much that I wondered if I should see the doctor, until a massage therapist told me we carry grief in our arms. That made sense to me.

Kay, Mark used to use something topical for muscle and joint pain called Voltaren gel. It's now OTC. Thought I'd suggest it in case you hadn't used it.

Yes, it appears we can expect S-y weather here tomorrow. I'll leave it to your imagination to guess which word I mean. 😆

James, your handle on life broke off. You're allowed to not have a handle on things right now. (And I mean that in the nicest way possible!)

That kind of carelessness on their part is infuriating because typos can and usually do change the meaning of anything. Any date given in an email should automatically be accompanied by the appropriate day of the week, in case there's an error somewhere, you can see the probable mistake instantly and not be thrown like you describe. How frustrating!

Just an old way of referring to wisdom painfully acquired.

Kay, that's so sad and so cruel of them. They deprived her of being able to grieve. The lack of common sense... 🙄 I am reminded that I was told that Mark's mother was given antidepressants some months after he passed because she was crying too much. I told his sister who lives near her, my low opinion of that course of action, and she didn't quite agree but then I have issues with her for how she handled things. oh well.

The rehab center tried that with me and I had to pay something like $35 for a paper copy of his chart notes, which were ultimately inconclusive. The charting was atrocious in terms of language, clarity, spelling, etc. As for the hospital, I was denied those records because we were not married and even though I was listed as his primary contact, they refused and said his legal next of kin (sister) would have to ask for the records. I think I gave up at that point. Just no energy. The sense of futility was too much.

I respectfully disagree there. It makes you seem like a normal human being. None of us wish that kind of life for our loved ones. And your sense of guilt for not raising hell, well I get that very much. This all happened to my partner pre-Covid, so we didn't have that extra layer of difficulty that you did. 😟 When I read your description of his deterioration, my first thought was sepsis. Sometimes it's called septic shock or septicemia, and it's often fatal. It's incredibly common. Sometimes death from sepsis takes awhile but ultimately the sheer number of bad bacteria proliferating in the body overwhelms defenses and poisons the blood, so to speak. That's what septicemia means: septic blood. I'm not a lawyer or doctor but my educated guess is "natural causes" is code or euphemism for sepsis. I, too, thought about going after the "rehab center" (not the hospital) for failing him as I described elsewhere, but I didn't have the energy at the time. Recently hospitals were required to develop protocols to identify sepsis before it can flare up. In our case, the hospital missed the signs as he seemed to be recovering, but then a boomerang effect occurred and he developed a super high fever and went unconscious. THEN they got him on antibiotics and cooled him down using a cooling wrapper for the whole body to bring down the temp. The septic bacteria like to lodge in the joints, especially, so in the hospital, they had to operate on wrists, knees, shoulders etc to clean out pockets to septic bacteria. It just about killed me to see how he had been cut open so many places, still kept sedated and on a ventilator etc etc etc Jeez. Some people recover, like Mark did for awhile, but I learned later that the effects on the brain from the bacteria, the lack of oxygen, the induced coma etc really changes the person and reduces function, cognition etc. Also dialysis takes a lot of blood out of the body which then deprives the brain of needed oxygen-rich blood, and people on dialysis often develop early onset dementia. This is particularly true for people who are Hispanic, Black and Native American. And I learned all this because of what I saw him go through, after the fact, when there was absolutely nothing I could do. if I knew then what I know now... 🙄

Beautifully said, as usual, Marg.

Welcome. You're neither a wimp nor dumb, and everything you say makes perfect sense. That's because those of us in this particular forum "get it." After 20 years, he became so embedded in your existence that you've known nothing else BUT his presence, support and "there-ness." And now that all this has been torn away from you, less than a month ago, you're feeling that emptiness which is a raw, gaping wound. I'm sorry to say that it will feel that way for awhile.

I had to mull this one over for awhile before responding. Like others whose beloveds were caught in chronic illnesses, I feel the relief of knowing he no longer has to endure dialysis, get up at 4:00 AM three days a week to go to the dialysis unit, come home, rest, maybe some TV or Internet, eat dinner, go back to bed. I feel the relief of knowing Covid can't touch him now. I feel the relief of no longer getting calls from unknown numbers and wondering if it's someone from the unit or the hospital telling me he's been hospitalized. I like your term survivor's contradictions, Ana. It's a good way to phrase it. Thank you. Wrong as in morally wrong? In my case, I don't think it's wrong, because I'm convinced he came to the conclusion, lying there in the dark by himself one night, that he had no more desire to keep going. I believe he came to the conclusion that his life upon discharge home would be just as I described it in the first paragraph-- only worse: he would be discharged home being completely unable to walk or bear weight, needing personal care attendants, needing specialized transport three frickin' times a week in and out of the house, and worst of all, be a huge burden on me and to me. The thought that I cannot shake is, "Why couldn't he tell me this, out loud?" I feel like we were robbed--again--of any chance to level with one another over his apparent decision to let go. Not only were we robbed of any possibility of hospice by the incompetent rehab center social worker or the cold and heartless charge nurse--neither of whom could recognize the signs of a person getting ready to die--everything had to come to the point of being sent to the hospital overnight when he became essentially nonresponsive. Just like I told the nurse, something was wrong, out of character for him. Did anyone listen or acknowledge? Nope. And that's not even the last of the things we were robbed of. Even more things happened right up to 15 minutes after he breathed his last. Maybe I'll write about it later. I don't know. I don't know how people eventually come to terms with being so badly failed by "professionals" who are supposed to be able to see signs, educate, help, and give support. Maybe that's why I like Ana's term survivor's contradictions. That's about the only way to begin to describe the massive complexity of how I feel about it all.

I save pithy sayings and memes and images like this that I stumble upon online, the ones where I instantly feel a sense of recognition or "here's wisdom painfully earned" because they are short, concise and full of truth, and thus easily remembered.

I agree with Kay, you're not a whiner. Everyone has their limits.

Day by day, hour by hour, it's about all you can do. 😕

ugh, the hits just keep on coming. You're due for some better luck! I hope the next days are uneventful.

Still working on that one, James. 3.5 years on and I am still asking what there is to look forward to, although I'll admit the damned pandemic is largely behind that feeling, currently. Although I am a gardener since age 15 when the "bug" bit me, and have had a big garden for 20+ years, it was only this past spring that I discovered that there is very little that makes me happy for more than a few minutes at a time, and that is F L O W E R S. Cooped up as we were in the early days of Covid, I had such cabin fever that I bought a lot of flower seeds from several companies... a LOT. 🙄 (and so did everyone else in the US!) I kind of overbought and kind of kicked myself for it when it came time to scatter these seeds, but the end result was worth it. All through July til now, seeing the scads of flowers waving in the breeze and all the bees, butterflies and birds etc brought a rather novel sense of what could be called happiness, so if I can survive the coming winter, I'm going to do it again-- twice as much. 😬 I'm probably crazy for considering this but oh well. What else is there to look forward to?

That happened to me just recently. I kept getting a refund check from a clinic I had a balance with. I forgot I paid it off and that I had set up automatic payments to the same place. So rather than notify me they were getting payments on a paid-off balance, they kept sending me paper refund checks each month. After the third one arrived, I thought, "I just cashed one of these last month. Why am I getting another one?" So I called them up and we discovered the problem and I canceled the auto-pay, but wouldn't you think the clinic accounts payable dept would want to not have to keep on with the hassle of refunding me, and taken the step of alerting me? Sheesh.

I'm so sorry you're getting treated so shabbily. We all need closure. Most of the time, we don't get it, but that doesn't stop us from wanting it! I wanted to cheer you on, though, for the self-care, the exercise, weight loss, and especially the attention on your future and your own happiness. A funny thing happens when we do that... somehow that energy spent on the other person or people (or situations) gets redirected to ourselves, and seemingly-magical changes start happening. I've seen it over and over. I'm convinced that taking care of ourselves first is a crucial early step toward life changes.

Good for you, Kay. I learned about statins some years ago and I persuaded Mark not to accept the prescription written by whoever it was at the time. It's my understanding that doctors only get one course in food and nutrition in their many years of medical training, unless they choose to specialize in it. So they don't really understand how food choices can make or break us, and of course there are the solicitations and sales of drugs, and kickbacks for prescribing them, as you mention, which is beyond disgusting.

You're right, Karen. Open secret that no one talks about: since insurance is king, doctors and other helping professionals are expected to meet a billing quota, depending on their practice. There's also the fear of malpractice and lawsuits. For doctors, if they don't push enough procedures on the patient, they get the side-eye from administrators ($$$$$$$), or worse, they push procedures on the off chance of catching some problem in the early stages. Prevention is one thing, but pushing procedures for fear of getting in trouble/angry vengeful patient later on is another. On my side of things, no billing, no paycheck so I have to hustle to get people lined up for appointments and meet a quota or I get a lecture and a individual service plan to rectify the situation. It's all about the dollars. 🙄😛🤪 I know you all know this, too, it's just one of my pet peeves.

I think that, on the soul level and in the dream-world, Time--if it exists in dimensions invisible to us-- runs differently. There are countless stories and legends from all over the world about other dimensions and worlds besides ours, in which Time operates at other speeds. Fairy tales, for one, and stories like The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe for another. An indigenous/Native American person told me that it's commonly held that after a death of such a beloved one, we are knocked a bit out of the stream of time as we once knew it. And we do experience that, in lots of ways, but I think this person meant that literally --we're in another timeline, parallel to everyone we know. We can see them, and vice versa, but like layers of an onion, we're one layer removed from them-- tears included! 😢 In modern slang we'd say "caught in a time warp." It makes sense, to me anyway, that the soul of the one who has gone is out of step with us in more ways than just being physically absent. I only had one dream that could be considered disturbing. Many more were interesting, one was actually amusing, several were meaningful. The rest were fleeting and fragmented and I barely remembered them. Maybe try keeping a dream journal and see if you notice anything. Maybe the dreams of life before her have to work their way out of the dream pipeline. Once they clear out, maybe she'll be able to come through.